Strips like today’s really just make Batiuk’s habit of writing his strips so far in advance extra hilarious. Not only is nobody wearing a mask and everyone is basically touching, you have a roughly hundred year old man on oxygen right in the middle of them. And it’s not like the global pandemic just sprung up in the last week when it was too late to tweak the strip. Batiuk’s had nine months where he could’ve had the artist at least draw masks on the characters to make it look like it reflected reality.
Les blatantly ogling Funky’s ass with both of his hands in his pockets while his Lesser Wife is standing right next to him is extra awkward.
When did Crazy Harry’s wife die from cancer/get murdered by him/starve because his part time job at a comic shop couldn’t feed them both? It’s especially sad when you’re a Funky Winkerbean character whose tragic untimely death doesn’t even merit an arc, or Les silently staring at your obituary in the paper.
Tag: Cayla
You Forgot the Hot Chocolate And Cookies, Cayla
Oh, yay. Another sideways strip. If your comics are so awkwardly wordy that they have to be turned sideways to fit in all the dialogue, maybe you’re doing something wrong. Or maybe visual storytelling isn’t for you.
What Lisa-related writing do you think Les is working on while he sits there silently while Cayla literally praises his greatness and showers him with kisses? That is one awkwardly clunky line Cayla is reading. I wonder if this was one of those situations where Les won because nobody else bothered to enter.
I have a feeling that Batiuk tells himself “You deserved to win” every day, when he thinks about the Pulitzer. I can see how he could be that deluded, given that he can spew out garbage like last week’s arc and still get it published and somehow get interviewed in major newspapers like he’s an Artist.
It’s the Month of Lestember!
This way to today’s real strip.
Thought-Les
Les, the humorless shmuck, humorless shmucks around in today’s strip.
Nothing – not cancer, not Hollywood, not even the students he loathes so much – seems to disturb and anger Les more (oy, sorry) than people laughing at him over something utterly trivial. Funky and Crazy found this out the hard way 9 years ago, in the infamous “Children left behind” strip. Despite what they are doing in Les’ imagination, I doubt they would be bold enough to so much as chuckle anywhere within earshot of Les again.
Is this how TB’s family and friends reacted to his recurring role as “Art Professor” (I think that is both his name and his profession) in the ongoing live-action saga of The Cardinal, the greatest comic superhero around who dresses like the Iowa State University mascot?
Yeah it probably is. Also, Les himself exists in The Cardinal live-action universe. *shudder*
…that the Play is the Tragedy “Les,” and Its Hero–
…is the Enabler Cayla.
You know, Les and Lisa are horrible, horrible people. But today’s entry makes a strong case that their infection has spread beyond the immediate Moore family, and has made its way into the outer world. Soon, entire cities, entire nations will fall as the Lisa-Worship pandemic spreads to every corner of the globe.
Because here’s Cayla, Les’ current wife, asking Les to make sure that Lisa, Les’ dead wife–dead at least twenty years now, mind–is protected from the machinations of the cruel, uncaring world of entertainment–you know, the slugs who push awful contrived entertainments on the (shudder) masses so they can sell toilet paper and cheap auto loans.
And this is something Cayla cannot stand. Because Lisa’s reputation, Lisa’s legacy, is the only thought she has.
Not a thought for herself remains. Not a thought for herself, her own child, her marriage, her future. It’s all Lisa now. It will never be anything other than Lisa. Lisa.
I thought I was being clever the other day when I referenced “Colossus: The Forbin Project.” (And c’mon, I kinda was. And if you haven’t seen that film, then you should.) But the real reference film here is far more chilling. From 1956.
Well, it started, for me it started last Thursday. In response to an urgent message from my nurse I’d hurried home from a medical convention I’d been attending. At first glance, everything looked the same. It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.
The “Colossus” movie ended with Dr. Forbin’s defiant “Never!” The book ended similarly, but included a final paragraph:
Never?
Anyway, that’s all from me for now. Thank you all for your indulgence, your creativity and your knowledge. It always makes hosting this place a treasure, when the actual strips make it a chore. I learn nothing from the strip, but learn a lot from you all. Kudos!
Tune in Monday, when your snarker extraordinaire Epicus Doomus takes the center seat in the Funkyverse’s most-watched game show, “How Bad Can It Get?”
Son of Stuck Funky 
